


A House at the End of the Road

by ikindofrock



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon-Typical Violence, Drama, F/F, Female Friendship, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Politics, Post-Canon, Secret Identity, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-08
Updated: 2015-12-10
Packaged: 2018-04-30 13:48:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 15,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5166074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ikindofrock/pseuds/ikindofrock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the fall of the mountain, one of the Sky People turns up half-dead at a strange little house in the middle of nowhere. Who is the young woman, and what secrets does she keep? </p><p>There will be Polis and masquerade balls and Grounder fashion, but first, a strange little tale about a very strange pair.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Stranger Comes to Call

**Author's Note:**

> So here it is, my long-gestating labor of love. I spent (and continue to spend) a lot of time thinking about what might credibly happen after season two, and this is what came out. I hope people enjoy it and come back for more, as there's some seriously self-indulgent drama to come.
> 
> Come harass me at theoncominghope.tumblr.com.

The front door opens, a rare occurrence these days. A covered woman appears, dark brown tendrils peeking out beneath her blood red hood. A bright tube of metal flashes out from her left hand - her lightstick is locked and loaded. 

“Look what we have here. A little munchkin for me to eat?” she says to the feral child knocking on the door, offering a smile with just a hint of teeth. She grabs the basket from the shaking child. “Please thank your mother for the food.” The child scuttles away, eyes wide, without response. The woman’s smile disappears, and she closes the door with a quick flick of her wrist and walks inside. 

She floats through the hallway, afraid to make a sound. She listens for any hidden breaths, flashing a lantern into the darker corners, as though she's hunting for ghosts. After a few minutes of this, she's satisfied, and returns to the aft bedroom. 

"Well, we've got food at least. The farmer’s daughter dropped it by. She looked terrified." The woman lowers her hood and removes bread from the basket. She holds it out, but withdraws her hand after a few moments. “Still on your hunger strike, huh? Well, you’ll be delighted to know that I gave the kids a new chapter in their story of Lilith, the ageless witch on the top of the hill. All you’ve gotta do is threaten to make a meal out of them and they scamper down the mountain like clumsy ferrets.”

There's a body on the bed, still as death but for the gentle rise and fall of her chest. Her eyes are open but she stares straight at the ceiling. 

“You’re right. I’ve gotta get a new routine.” Lilith opens a container of soup from the basket. She spoons a tiny amount and brings it to the mouth of the woman on the bed. "C'mon, my friend. You got a whole five words out yesterday. Let's try to break the record, eh?"

Lilith is without impatience. Those first five words were a marked success after weeks of silence. 

On one of those terrible nights when only the most desperate animals brave the outside, destroying each other for what’s left of the autumn harvest, Lilith heard a weak scrape against the front door. She grabbed her light stick and cracked the door open, just a little bit, only to find a skeleton of a woman splayed out on the steps, pelted by hail and snow. 

The stranger looked as though she’d suffered an animal attack, or worse, reapers. Lilith wondered how she'd even made it up the hill but quickly stopped wondering and pulled her indoors. Pale pink icicles crunched beneath the woman’s body as Lilith slid her in - blood turned to frost. 

Lilith peeled the rotting furs from the woman’s body, searching for the source of the bleeding, though she couldn't find it. She suspected that weeks of dirt, smothering her skin, might obscure the wound. 

She ran to grab one of the buckets she kept outside to catch the falling snow. While she'd taught the village the basics of getting water to flow at the ready, the moving waters stilled in the wintertime. 

She placed the bucket next to the fire. Once it melted, she began wiping the girl down, beginning with her face and hair. 

After some time, the caked crimson flakes covering her hair gave way to shimmering blonde hair. Wiping her face revealed once-soft skin damaged by the harsh winter winds. The girl flinched at each dab of cold water, but said nothing. She barely even blinked. 

Lilith brought an old straw mat out to the foyer and gently rolled the girl onto it. Her leg was badly infected - the bleeding had stopped but the wound churned out yellow foam. Lilith sucked in her breath as she recognized the symptoms - only the bite of the silver bear could cause such eruptions. 

Lilith forced aside the memory of her last encounter with such a wound, of bodies slowly blackening, turned rotten by a poison that lives in the saliva of the beast, biding their time until they pass on in a slow, painful convulsion.

She still carried a small amount of the antidote in her emergency kit. She hurried to the pantry to find it, and hoped the bite was recent. 

After the injection, the stranger fell into a heavy sleep. But when she awoke, she screamed and screamed. Lilith couldn't make head or tail of the feral yowls. Each day, she waited for the stranger to tire herself out, pouring sips of water when the girl's screams faded to silent whimpers. This went on for three weeks. 

All the while, Lilith continued with her daily routine. The winter was coming to its end, which meant she’d have to come up with new farming tricks to trade for food and water and clothing; knowledge was her only currency. She hoped that if the villagers heard the screams, they chalked them up to tricks of the wind. Still, she took extra care each time she opened the door.

Eventually, the fever dreams stopped. Then Lilith made every effort to get words out of the young woman. For twelve days, she tested each of the different clan languages. In each language, she invited the silent girl to tell her story, offering a morsel of her own tale. 

And on the 13th day, she decided to test the Old Tongue, on a whim really, just to see if she'd retained any of her old schooling. 

"Night stranger," she repeated for the 13th time. "You’re safe here. Share your story with me so I can help you heal."

"I can’t," the sick woman finally croaked. "I've seen too much death."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thoughts? Insults? Tomatoes to the face?


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our leading ladies get to know each other a little.

Lilith forces the stranger to sit up and eat. "So you're one of the Sky People, aren't you?"

The woman nods. "How'd you know?” Her voice cracks with every consonant.

"Not many left schooled in the Old Tongue. And the Maunon are all dead. By the hand of one of your own, from what I’ve heard."

The woman looks away. “You’re well informed.”

"It’s a tale people love to tell - a whole slice of humanity locked up in the stars, ignorant of the world down here, and then they send down a fearsome warrior queen to wipe a foul stain from the face of the world. That’s the vengeance of the gods, that is.”

The stranger turns visibly green. Lilith pulls an empty bucket in front of her, just in the nick of time.

"That’ll be the poison on its way out." Lilith pauses and rubs the girl's back. "When you're done hurling out your guts, perhaps you can give me a name."

"It's...Juno."

Lilith suspects this is not her real name, but keeps that to herself.

"And to think I was just talking about the gods...Juno’s one of the oldest. One of the most powerful."

"That's ironic," Juno replies, with a hint of a smile. "I’m pretty powerless right now."

"Power is overrated, believe me." Lilith stands up and holds out a hand. "Getting back on your feet, on the other hand? Lets you do important things like taking baths and feeding your own self."

Juno scans the bloodstained mattress. "You'll probably have to burn this. Sorry."

"Not to worry,” Lilith says with a sigh. “I'm just glad you survived."

"I'm glad someone is."

Lilith grabs her hand firmly and pulls her up. "I'll be even happier when you don't stink. Come on, I’ll draw you a bath."

\---

Juno emerges, hours later, and Lilith attempts to stifle a laugh.

“Am I not wearing this right?”

“That depends,” Lilith says. “Have you seen a human in clothes before?”

Juno dramatically tosses a misplaced fur over her shoulder, straight at Lilith, and they both start giggling. Lilith’s pleased to learn she has a sense of humor.

“Well excuse me, but I’ve never attended a grounder fashion show.”

“What’s a grounder?”

“It’s...it’s what we called the people who survived on Earth. Before we knew that there were different clans.” Juno pauses and sits down. “In fairness, we didn’t know that anyone survived on Earth. How arrogant were we?”

“Well I figured they were teaching you kids a bunch of nonsense up there in the sky, but that’s just ridiculous.” Lilith reaches over to adjust Juno’s shirt. “I thought your ancestors were the best and brightest of humanity.”

“That’s what they always told us. I have a feeling the criteria weren’t exactly objective.”

Juno sneaks an appraising glance at Juno, the stranger who acts like a lost girl, sounds like a lost girl, but sits up just a touch too straight, too stiff, as though she’s balancing against an invisible weight.

“But what about you? How’d you end up out here in the middle of nowhere?”

“Well…” Lilith picks at her fingernails, unsure of how to respond. She decides on truth, as seen in the reflection of a cracked, dirty mirror. “Where I was, there was no more room for me to grow. No room to change. I wanted to reinvent myself, so here I am.”

“Who did you want to be?”

“The kind of person who can take in the occasional stranger and treat them with kindness.”

“And I appreciate that." Juno cracks her knuckles, a loud crack. “Is that why you said earlier...that power is overrated.” 

 _You’re a very sharp listener, Juno_. Lilith draws in a deep breath and riffs again off that cracked, dirty mirror. “I’ve seen what it does. It makes you less human.”

“I’ve seen it too,” Juno replies, looking pale. She changes the subject. “Maybe you can show me around? You’ve taken such good care of me, let me help you out if I can.”

“I’ll show you around, but don’t thank me. I’ve just got one rule.”

“And that is?” Juno’s eyes flash with fear.

“If you leave, you don’t betray this place. Only the local yokels know I'm here.”

“Oh, is that all,” Juno says, grinning mischievously. “God forbid I betray this house of riches. I mean, you’ve got a whole pot and pan.”

“Hey! I’ve made a real effort to make this home for myself, and I don’t wanna lose it.”

“You call this effort?” Juno pauses to scan the room. “You don’t even have chairs.”

“Well I guess we know who’ll be sleeping on the concrete tonight.”

“I’m kidding.” Juno cracks a smile. “I won’t give you up. Betrayal’s not my style.”

“Then I’ll give you the grand tour.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time on AO3, Lilith brews her own beer and the girls get drunk.


	3. Fan clubs and fairy tales

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fairytales, literature, and a light conversation about a certain Commander.

The food delivery runs off scared again. Lilith tries not to laugh at the child’s persistent fear.

“You enjoy this too much.”

“What?”

“Scaring the children.”

“Before you turned up, that was the only entertainment I had.” Lilith flashes a light into the far corners of the room as usual, still worried about intruders.

“I wonder how they’d feel about you picking up a stray.”

“Would probably ruin my carefully curated mystique. Wicked witches don’t normally have friends.”

“Says who?”

“Says a thousand years of human fiction. The Libocon is full of fables and fairy tales and supernatural humdingers, and while they’re from different eras and different countries, they all agree on one thing - the isolated witchy types don’t usually have friends. Minions, sometimes.”

"I refuse to be the minion in your fairy tale."

"Well, if the villagers find out about you, I have to tell them something, don't I?"

Juno sticks her tongue out. “What’s the Libocon?”

“We dug it up a few years ago. We think it’s where they kept copies of every book published before the disaster. Most were destroyed, but some were saved. Much like humanity.” Lilith digs through the grocery basket to see what the villagers sent, and stares mournfully at a tiny sack of flour.

“I bet people died to save those books. All so you could educate yourself on the social lives of witches.”

“And they say history doesn’t have a sense of humor. I did get something useful out of it before the Commander closed it, though.” She points to a fat tome called _The Encyclopedia of Country Living, Farming and Self-Sufficiency_. “ It’s how we’re able to enjoy this lovely little feast the villagers bring us every week. Emphasis on little.”

“Of all human literature, that's the book you pulled?”

“Hey, Captain Judgmental. I had about ten seconds to take what I could before the glorious Commander vacuum-sealed the place. Like you’d have done any better.”

A sudden flush appears on Juno’s face. Lilith wonders if there’s still poison in her system.

“Why’d she seal it? Afraid of a tribe of book nerds running amok?”

“That would be rich, coming from the queen of the book nerds. I don’t think she’s ever spoken a sentence she didn’t memorize, banging on about Augustus and Catherine the Great in the middle of war meetings.” Lilith starts mashing the barley.

“Then why?”

“She closed it down for preservation and only allowed in one scribe per clan, to copy every book. Two years later, they were only half finished. And even after all that, you could barely read their handwriting. Good ol’ Lexa and her lack of follow-through.”

A bowl smashes on the ground. “Juno, you have to be less of a klutz. It’s not like I’m invited to the Sunday market.”

“I’m so sorry!” Juno races to pick up the pieces, her face flushed with embarrassment, then stops. “You knew her?”

“Who?”

“Lexa.”

“Only a little.” Off Juno’s pained look, “We weren’t exactly friends.”

Juno collects the ceramic pieces on the floor. Lilith bends over to help and sees a flash of sadness. She groans. “Don’t tell me.”

“Tell you what?”

“For godssakes, Juno. Have a little self-respect.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“That’s the third time you’ve snuck in weird little questions about Lexa when we’re talking about something else. You’re one of her bloody groupies, aren’t you, sitting around obsessing over her latest battles and fantasizing over being her lucky lady.”

“I certainly am not.” Juno’s blushing though, which doesn’t do much to persuade Lilith she’s telling the truth. “I’m _not_.”

“Sure.” Lilith just laughs.

Juno purses her lips. “Don’t we have to make dinner?”

“Yes we do.” Lilith runs her fingers through the bag of seed that arrived with the groceries. “And a little something special.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time on AO3, the girls get drunk and get into a fight.


	4. Of Beer and Battle Strategy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Juno and Lilith get drunk and get into a fight about Lexa, Mountain Men and battle strategy.

_FOUR WEEKS LATER_

“When can I have some?”

“Were you always this impatient?”

“It’s been four weeks. A friend of mine could make moonshine in three days.”

“Believe it or not, I want to live past fifty. Poison hooch seems like a step in the wrong direction.” Lilith approaches the first bottle. “Besides, this recipe’s been perfected over hundreds of years.”

“Given how things turned out, I’m not sure anything was perfected before the incident.”

“Trust me on this.” Lilith pops the cork and passes it to Juno. “Smell that? Hoppy perfection.”

“It smells...alcoholic. Which is exactly what I’d hoped for.”

“Philistine.” Lilith pours the cider into two cups. “This recipe came straight from George Washington.”

“An old general with slaves and a funny wig? That’s the guy you want to trust on this stuff?”

“He’s not just any general, Juno. He had guts. He did what he had to do to win the war.”

“I assume you’re about to bore me with the details.”

“Heck yeah I am. Talk about cold blood. When he heard that Hessian spies surrounded his troops in the woods, he let hundreds of them die so the rest of the army could escape. And the ones he left behind didn’t just die, they were brutalized, their blood running like a river to the Gowanus Canal. His veins were made of pure steel, kiddo.”

“Is that why we’re drinking his beer? Nostalgia for the taste of murder and wasteful death?”

“Are you saying a general can’t be more than a general? Everyone’s got layers.”

“Sure they do.”

“You think I was always a self-sufficiency enthusiast living on the top of a hill?”

“Well no, but--.”

“But what? I was another person before I came here, and that person will always be part of me.” Lilith waits, not for the first time, for Juno to ask her, well, anything about her past. She doesn’t. “But now I’m someone else. Not the old me.” She waits again. Nothing, again.

“Ain’t that the truth.” Juno slices into a bright purple carrot. “Come on, let’s finish dinner so we can celebrate.”

“What’s the rush! We’ve got nothing but time, Juno. We can take a moment to do other things.”

“Like what?”

“Like talk.”

Juno sighs and puts the knife down. “What would you like to talk about?”

“I don’t know a damned thing about you, and you don’t know anything about me. Doesn’t that bother you?”

“Well it seems to bother you. I’m fine with it.”

“Fine, fine.” Lilith snatches a pair of tin plates from the cupboard. “Have it your way. Two strangers, living in the same place, staying strange.” Very strange.

“Look.” Juno turns to Lilith. “I...what you need to know about me is that this is me. This is who I am now. Who I was before...I’d like to forget.”

“You’re too young to need to forget.” Lilith’s heart breaks a little when she sees the look of sadness in Juno’s eyes. She pulls her into a hug. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pushed.”

“I can’t just...open up.” Juno lets go of Lilith’s embrace and returns to the half-chopped vegetables on the counter.

Lilith warms a pot on the stove. “Well like I said, we have all the time in the world. When you’re ready, I’m here. Like literally, I’m stuck here.”

“What happens if you’re found?”

Death by the most unkindest cut. Thousands of cuts, probably. “Not an issue. If we just keep our heads down and don’t change our routine, we’ll be fine.”

“You’re cocky.”

“Because we’re careful.” Lilith shakes some food from the pot to the plates. “You’ve been here for how many months, and the villagers don’t even know you’re here. And as for me, I hardly think they’re going to bite the hand that almost literally feeds them.”

Juno thumbs at a bookmark that sits about ¾ through _The Encyclopedia of Country Living, Farming and Self-Sufficiency_. “What happens when you’ve taught them everything that’s in the book?”

“There’s plenty of human knowledge left to be reinvented.” Lilith hands Juno a couple of bottles. “Or we’ll just get them all drunk on my super-delicious beer.”

Lilith nudges Juno forward so she can’t see her face. She doesn’t tell Juno about how, lately, she’ll wake up in the middle of the night and hear soft voices snaking in through the windows. She doesn’t tell her about the dark, mischievous smile she spotted on the girl who skipped away after dropping off their weekly basket of food. And more than anything, she doesn’t tell her that she’s just as afraid of being forced to face her past life as Juno is.

\---

_FOUR HOURS AND MANY BOTTLES LATER_

“Ok, this is probably better than Monty’s hooch.”

“Is Monty the so-called friend who tried to poison you with moonshine?”

“Hey, no one died.” Juno stifles a laugh. “Not saying no one got sick though.”

Lilith marvels at Juno’s laughter; who would have imagined, eight weeks before, that the half-dead woman on her front step would not only recover but turn into a friend?

“What did you say?”

“I didn’t say anything.” Lilith feels her face turning red. Must be the beer.

“Oh.” Juno giggles, and then stops. “Hey Lil?”

“It’s Lilith. Not Lil’. I’m not li’l.”

“Alright Lil’ Lilith.” Juno falls silent. Juno’s eyes shift from side to side, her next question coming out as barely a whisper. “How’d you find out about the Mountain Men?”

Lilith throws up her hands in mock-defeat. “Oh come on. Not with the groupie thing again.”

“I’m asking about you. You wanted me to ask about you,” Juno says with an annoyed huff. “How did you know what happened?”

“What do you mean?” Lilith’s struggling to hold up her head, let alone face Juno’s weird questions.

Juno reaches over and slaps Lilith on the shoulder, and nearly tumbles over in the process. “You said you’d been here over a year, and you never have visitors. How do you know what happens outside?”

“Most of the time, I don’t. But this was a special occasion.”

“How so?”

“The Maunon ripped 200 people from this village.” Lilith sighs. “Only 20 came back after the storm of the Mountain, but that was 20 more than expected. Called for a celebration.”

Juno begins to cough violently. After a moment, she slaps the back of her neck and takes a deep breath. “And then?”

“I taught them how to ferment apples, and in exchange they told me the whole story of the Mountain Storm.”

Lilith pauses to take a giant swig of her beer, downing what’s left. “And I gotta hand it to Lexa, she managed it without losing too many of our warriors. Guess she lost her stomach for battle after the clan wars.”

Off Juno’s silence, Lilith reaches for another bottle. “But that Sky Queen of yours. Talk about guts. Have you ever met her?”

Juno freezes. After a moment that drags like the slowest snail, she shakes her head.

“The kids out there in the village, you hear them acting out stories they’ve made up about her. They make their little brothers pretend to be Maunon and then beat them bloody with sticks. It’s delightful.”

“Maybe they’d be better off playing at peace.”

“Where’s the fun in that?”

“People died, Lilith. What we did was murder.”

“Oh, please, tell me more about the morality of the Sky People.” Lilith gets up in a rush and immediately swoons. “Sending 100 kids down to the Earth as your vanguard? Doesn’t sound too high-minded to me. Sounds like your people confused “women and children first” with a battle strategy.”

Juno gets up, swerving into Lilith’s face. “Well maybe they did that because we’re tougher,” she slurs. “After all, we did what your commander failed to do.”

Lilith shoves her away. “I thought you just said it was murder.”

“Don’t you shove me.” Juno immediately shoves back. “Did Lexa even try to rescue your people before we came along?”

“She wasn’t dumb enough to voluntarily restock the maunon’s blood bank, unlike a trail of idiots before her.” Lilith stands straight up, towering over Juno. “You’d better be careful about getting up in my face. And now you’ve gone and made me defend that bitch.”

“I didn’t make you do anything.” Juno does not back down. “All you’ve told me is that other commanders failed, but she failed to even try.”

Lilith detects a hint of bitterness in the statement, but ignores it. It’s just the alcohol talking, she thinks. “Why are we even talking about her? I don’t want to talk about her.”

“Me neither.” Juno sits back down in a huff. Then she narrows her eyes. “Wait...why don’t you want to talk about her?”

“Because she’s just not that interesting.” Lilith sits back down too. “Besides, we’ve just spent 4 weeks making fermented art, and we should talk about that, instead of banging on about the past like a pair of impotent old men.”

“I’m sorry.” Juno stares at the floor. “I didn’t mean to get so worked up. Must be the alcohol.”

“It’s cool.” But when Lilith sees Juno’s eyes, she sees something new - a hardness like granite, bright and devastating. “I think I’ve also had too much. I’m gonna turn in.”

Juno doesn’t respond.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time on AO3, their peaceful idyll is rudely disturbed. All roads lead to Polis.


	5. The Sense of An Ending

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our runaway ducklings mend fences, but their happiness is short-lived. One Commander sees to that.

_ONE WEEK LATER_

Lilith turns over and looks out the window. A hint of yellow peeks through the curtains; she looks to her right and the bed is empty, the same as it had been each night since the great cider unveiling. She wraps a shawl around herself and goes to the living room.

As she’d suspected, Juno had fallen asleep on a rug in the den. She lies curled up by the remnants of the fire, half a smile on her face, never looking more like an innocent child. Lilith resists an urge to stroke her hair, to hold her close and tell her that she’s safe now, that everything will be fine. Then she remembers her eyes as they were that night, hard as stone, and she tries to still the worry that the stranger in her midst is more dangerous than she seems.

With a sigh, she turns to the kitchen and thinks that she’d better start breakfast.

About an hour later, Juno walks up to Lilith and hands her a book.

“What’s this?”

“A peace offering.”

“You didn’t need to do that.” Lilith opens the book anyway, and reads the title aloud. “ _The Tale of Two Cities_ , by Charles Dickens.”

“I think you’ll like it. I’ve read it a few times.”

“What’s it about?”

“The French revolution. Fighting tyranny in the name of justice. Etc.”

“I don’t know anything about France, but the rest of it sounds interesting.”

“It's violent and dramatic and all the things you want a story to be.”

“Violent how?"

“Let's just say a few noblemen lose their heads, and not in the metaphorical sense.”

“Juno I...don't think I can read this. I've seen it happen.” Lilith swallows and hands the book back. "It haunts me in my sleep.”

“Seen what? People getting their heads chopped off?” Off Lilith’s nod, she looks away and shakes her head. “You said you like to read. I just wanted to make up for the other night.”

"You didn't do anything wrong. People argue. It's fine."

This is how it had been since their fight. Juno veers between great outbursts of self-flagellation and quiet, uncertain attempts to mend fences, but each attempt just leaves them both more off-kilter. Lilith wonders how to swing her into equilibrium, but comes up short.

“Look, I’ll give it a try. Lord knows I need some new reading material.” Lilith lays a gentle shoulder on Juno’s arm. “Thank you.”

“You’re not just saying that to make me feel better, are you?”

“You’ll never know.”

\---

_THE ONE WHERE THEY GET DISCOVERED_

“You know, I’m starting to think they’re not scared of me anymore.”

“Kids get wise fast.” Juno peeks out the window and watches a little girl throw a middle finger at their little house. "And they’ve figured out that you’re not that scary.”

“I’m scary as hell. I could scare the shit outta you.”

“Uh huh.”

Lilith hopes Juno never has to see her prove that statement. “Well if the kids are on to me, we’ll need a new game to pass the time. Any ideas?”

Juno pauses. “Maybe we try to befriend them.”

“Don’t tell me you’re bored of me.”

“No…” Juno smiles shyly. “Just thought it could make life easier.”

“Oh sure. I feed you, I clothe you, I put a roof over your head, and suddenly you decide you need more.” Lilith pauses and grins. “Is that melodramatic enough for you?”

Juno laughs. “Sure was, mom.”

“Don’t call me mom.” Lilith playfully punches Juno’s shoulder. “I’m not old enough to be your mom.”

“I can’t tell the difference after thirty-five. All you old folk look alike.”

“You’ll pay for that.”

_KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK!_

A panic takes Lilith and she freezes by the kitchen stove. She quickly looks around at the books, the kitchen utensils, the little things she’d built for herself in her brief time in her little house at the end of the road, and she can’t move.

Another knock on the door rings out through the house, and someone tries to turn the door-knob. “That’s not the kids,” Lilith says.

Juno reaches for the lightstick charging by the kitchen table. “We’ll fight them off,” she says.

“I don’t think we will.” Lilith hears the shuffling of their visitors, ten people at least, and closes her eyes, locking in her memories of the simple happiness of the past year.

\---

_WELCOME TO POLIS, MOTHERFUCKERS_

The two women bounce atop the backs of horses like sacks of flour. The aching in Lilith’s back is only drowned out by the terror in her heart.

“One look at me and she’ll have my head," Lilith says. "Not that I wouldn’t deserve it.”

“We’re going to get out of this.” Juno shoots Lilith a worried look. “She who? And why?”

Lilith doesn’t have time to answer. In a flash, the guards covers their faces with burlap hoods, tying them so tightly around the neck that both miss a breath.

“Say your prayers,” a guard whispers in her ear, inches away, his breath so hot it pierces the thick hood. “Heda will see you now.”

Lilith shivers as the guards push them through the hallway. One of them sharply cudgels the back of her knees and she falls to the ground.

“Which of you will face my sword first?” A new voice spreads through the room, nearly drowned out by the relentless clanking of the guards’ armor. “On each side of me, a wanderling too stupid to find a hiding place outside my kingdom.”

Lilith hopes that no one can see her shaking. She knows she should volunteer to go first, to give Juno a better chance of survival, but she chooses silence. She doesn’t want to die. Not yet.

A knife slowly rips into her burlap hood.

Upon seeing her face, the Commander hisses, eyes burning, “So we meet again. And for the last time.” She presses the knife into Lilith’s neck and glances at the other prisoner. “But in the spirit of your own past actions, first you’ll get to watch me turn your companion’s skin inside-out.”

“She has nothing to do with this,” Lilith says. “Please.”

“I remember telling you the same thing. Didn’t seem to have an effect.” The Commander turns to the other prisoner, and with one flick of the knife, cuts open the other hood. Lexa snaps back when she sees the newly revealed face.

“Get out,” the Commander says to her guards. “Now!”

“Well this is just great,” Juno mumbles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next Time on AO3: Secret identities are revealed, and everything fractures.


	6. Revelation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Act II: Polis. Things get more than a little tense, and Lexa drops a bombshell.

Lexa pulls back. Small drops of blood drip from her knife. If Lilith didn't know better, she would have thought Lexa was ready to drink it up, drop by drop.

“I should gut you where you stand," Lexa says to Lilith.

“You’ve already hesitated too long,” Lilith replies, still as a glacier. “You won’t do it now.”

Lexa turns to Juno, and the glance they share, though it lasts but a second, is unmistakeable. Flashes of red appear on both their faces, but Lilith dismisses the flashes as tricks of the light. She knows not to trust the devious magic of the Polis court, where the dew settles on wall-length windows in the early morning like magic crystals, where everything sparkles under the direct sun streaming in through the skylight.

Lexa steps back and slouches in her throne. “Explain,” she says.

“We don’t need to explain anything to you." There's Juno, enveloping herself in the bravado Lilith barely knew she had.

“You’ve murdered more of my people than all the other clans combined. So when I find you playing house at the edge of the capital, I need an explanation. Unless you prefer war.”

“Juno has nothing to do with this,” Lilith declares in Trigedasleng, wondering why Lexa is speaking in the old tongue instead of their own language. “She’s just a girl who needed shelter. Which I provided. I am not entirely heartless, despite what you believe.”

“Don’t dismiss as beliefs what I’ve seen with my own eyes.” Lexa pauses, then switches back to the old tongue. “Juno, is that what she called you? Now this is sport indeed.”

Lilith looks at Juno. There’s no mistaking the redness on her face this time.

\---

Many minutes pass in silence. The three women carefully avoid looking at each other, afraid of giving anything away with a stray glance or obvious gesture.

The courtroom is perfectly clean, perfectly dry, as though it had been kept safe in plastic sheets while the rest of the planet burned.

“I’m still waiting for an explanation. I have all day.” Lexa steps forward, sure-footed, taking a moment to wipe her boots on the strip of cotton in front of her throne before she steps to the floor. “And, I should add, I also have tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that. Which you might not.”

“Cheap threats, Lexa? I would have thought that was beneath you.” Juno spits blood on the ground. The girl who once fussed over ink stains on her fingers, now sullying the speckled grey concrete without a care. “Of course that was before I learned that nothing’s beneath you.”

“Are you trying to hurt my feelings? You’ll have to do better than that."

Lilith rolls her eyes. "Can we get back to business so I don’t have to watch whatever... _this_...is?"

“Bored, are you?” Lexa raises her knife. "I wouldn't have thought time was any concern of yours, given your casual abdication."

"I don't judge what you do on a holiday, Lexa."

"I don't take holidays." Lexa steps forward, ever closer. "Only death could make me abandon my people.”

"Are you suggesting we’re cowards? Cause you’d have to have some nerve to tell me that,” Juno says.

“I made a choice. So did you.” Lexa approaches Juno with bright and lively eyes, challenging her without a word.

Lilith tries to ignores the scene before her, focusing on the loose thread unraveling from her hand ties. Just five more seconds…

Lexa twirls her knife for a moment. Then, without removing her eyes from Juno, she points it at Lilith again. "Her people are probably better off without her. But what of yours, _Juno_? You haven’t even asked me how they’re coping without you."

Lilith takes advantage of Lexa's divided attention and high kicks the knife from Lexa's hand. She knocks Lexa over and kneels over her, catching the knife as it comes down. She raises her hand to strike.

"No Lilith! Don't!" Juno shouts.

Lexa uses the moment of hesitation to retake control. She shoves Lilith off her body and smashes her into the wall. "Good thing she distracted you," she hisses. "You'd have ended the alliance."

Lexa pulls back, and then she tosses aside Lilith’s knife, just inches from Juno. Juno looks straight at Lexa. “What are you doing?”

“Machiavelli was right.” Lexa shakes her head. "It truly is double pleasure to deceive the deceiver.”

Juno huffs in frustration. "More commander bullshit? Really?"

Lilith looks back and forth between the two, and doesn’t like what she sees. On the one, pure bloodlust. And on the other, well, she can’t quite figure it out.

"It would seem that introductions are in order." Lexa sits back down on her throne, jabbing her knife into the armrest. “Juno and Lilith are terrible pseudonyms, by the way. Pretentious and cliché all at once.”

There it is. Lilith slumps where she stands, carefully avoiding any eye contact. “Remember me the way I was, Juno.”

“What are you talking about?” Juno darts her eyes back and forth between Lilith and Lexa, but neither look at her.

Lexa smiles. "Clarke Griffin, this is Nia, the current and soon to be former Queen of the Ice Nation."

"Azgeda queen, this is Clarke Griffin, commander of the sky people."

Lexa smiles at the horror on the faces of the other two. "I seem to have made an impression.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time on AO3: We pick up the pieces, and a dinner party goes awfully awry.


	7. Fracture

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lilith and Clarke reset, and Clarke gets sassy.

Lilith and Clarke sit in the living room of a tiny cottage on the edge of the city square, two weary empresses searching for ways to cut through the thick air. 

"So, night stranger. I knew you were not quite what you seemed, but I couldn’t have guessed this." Lilith knows that by breaking the silence, she’s ending any hope of maintaining their careful charade. But she also knows how little space lies between a disguise and the truth. No room for soft landings.

“You must hate me right now.”

“Why would I hate you? We’re just suffering from a particularly acute case of dramatic irony.”

“Which Lexa enjoyed far too much.”

“Can you blame her - I mean, look at us! Two deadly dilettantes, wasting our power and reputation in a village so useless that its continued existence is clearly a joke of the gods."

“You make that life sound so trivial. Like we're lazy, cowardly fools.”

“We were definitely fools for thinking it could last.” Lilith shivers. A tiny crack in the window lets in the brisk morning air.

“I never thought it would.”

“Hindsight is 20/20.” Lilith looks down at the frayed hem of her dress, suddenly embarrassed to be seen in Polis in something so...primitive.

“That’s one of those things people say when they’re trying to justify their bad decisions.”

"And you've never made one of those, I take it."

"That's not what I said."

“Then what are you saying?” Almost immediately, Lilith regrets asking the question.

“There was a moment, just a few days ago, Saturday, I think.” Juno slowly massages the rope burns on her left wrist. “We were rolling bread from the barley you’d ground. You were humming something as you worked - a song I’d never heard. But for a moment, just for a moment, I thought ‘this might be happiness.’ Maybe this is what that feels like - a boring, normal life.”

Lilith shivers at the warm thought gone cold. “I was humming an old harvest song. One my mother used to sing to me.” Lilith brushes a finger against Juno’s chin. “That was happiness. It was real.” 

“Then why has that memory changed already? It’s dissolving in my mind, like a magic trick. And I’m left with this...emptiness.”

"That's the nature of things, I suppose.” Lilith sighs and turns away. “Even our memories are inconstant."

“Then what’s the point? If everything is so changeable, then what are we even fighting for?”

“We fight for moments of happiness, Juno. And yes, we may not be meant for that slow life, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have happiness.”

“I don’t know if I believe that.”

Lilith doesn’t know either. She searches for solace in Juno’s -- in Clarke’s -- eyes, but finds little to comfort her.

\--

The door swings open and a young woman shuffles in, carrying a bag.

“Oh thank goodness,” Clarke says, leaping off her bed. “I’m starving.”

“No food,” the girl mumbles, handing the bag to Lilith. “You’re both to dine with the Commander.”

Clarke slumps back on her bed. “I’d rather starve.”

“One does not decline an invite from the Commander of the Allied Clans.”

“Right.” Clarke sighs. “Let’s get this over with. What’s in the bag?”

Lilith pours the contents out on the bed, and marvels at the variety of clothing on offer. She runs her hands through each strip of cloth, each skirt, each pair of pants, and for just a moment, she wonders why she ever gave up such finery. But then she looks at Clarke, whose eyes had hardened again into stone, and she remembers why.

“She’s sent us togs from the imperial wardrobe,” Lilith says. “The best in the kingdom.” 

“Why,” Clarke responds flatly.

“It means she’s giving us a chance. That she doesn’t want to embarrass us in front of civilians.”

“I’m not embarrassed. Are you?”

“Taking a vacation from our posts is one thing, Clarke. People understand that. But showing ourselves basic? People understand that too. And that’s not great for our life expectancy.”

Clarke nods her understanding. She quickly rifles through the clothing options and chooses deep black trousers and an emerald tunic. “This’ll do,” she says.

Later, when Clarke is dressed, a pin in her hair and a borrowed bracelet on her arms, Lilith remembers where she’s seen that outfit before, and she shudders. “Wear something else,” she says.

“Why? This is comfortable.”

“Just do it, Juno. She’ll think I put you up to it.”

“Up to what?” Clarke looks straight in Lilith’s eyes. “I’m not changing until you tell me why I need to.”

“Before I left….Clarke.”

Clarke flinches, just a little bit, at the way Lilith emphasizes her real name.

“I did something terrible, and Lexa was wearing that.”

“Was this when you murdered her girlfriend?”

“How do you know about that?”

“She mentioned it casually after she made me murder a friend of mine.” Clarke pats down a flyaway hair and continues to apply her makeup. “Weirdest bonding moment ever.”

“You’re not gonna change your clothes, are you.”

“Nope.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time on AO3: The last chapter in Lilith's perspective, and after that, let's just say that Clarke's brain has a lot of space for a certain Commander.


	8. A Most Anti-Social Social Event

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lilith stirs some shit up before she gracefully surrenders her third-person limited POV to Clarke.

Lilith fights an urge to take one of the dinner knives and stab herself or, preferably, one of her companions. She’s lodged between Clarke and Lexa on one row of the dinner table, opposite three of Lexa’s more sociable generals, which is to say that they’ll offer more than one grunt in response to a direct question.

Clarke never looks at Lexa, nor Lexa at her, but the careful avoidance of their eyes suggests they’re very conscious of where they’re not looking. When Clarke speaks, Lexa gives no sign of attention, carelessly brushing specks of dust from her trousers or swatting insects away from her head, but the next thing she says is invariably influenced by what Clarke had said. Sometimes she offers a direct critique guised in polite conversation, and sometimes she changes the subject a little too obviously to be natural. When Lexa speaks, Clarke attacks her food with supernatural fury, crashing her utensils so vigorously it’s a surprise the plate doesn’t shatter.

Lilith, meanwhile, slouches on the table, hugging a bottle of wine close to her chest.

“Seems her time away has turned the Ice Queen into a lightweight,” Indra says, unsmiling as ever.

“I’d love to see how you’d manage if you had to make your own booze, you pack of alkies.” Lilith fights the urge to rest her head on the table. It would be unbecoming of someone in her position - whatever that position might be. “So what happens now? Are you gonna return me to my people in maximum humiliation? Or are you just gonna keep me here and bore me to death?”

“This is a social outing, Nia. You should be happy I’m waiting before we talk business.” Lexa drives a hard glare at Lilith, still careful to avoid the woman on her left.

“I’m over the moon.” Lilith catches the dark look in Lexa’s eyes and forces herself to abandon her current line of chaos for an entirely different one. “But what about Clarkey here?”

“What about her?”

“Between the eyefucking and the careful attempts to avoid participating in the same conversation as you, I’d say there’s some kind of history to be teased out.” Lilith stands up, inspired by the last drops of alcohol touching her system. “Or is it because she bested you, Lex? Did you have a good little cry about how the little blond skygirl killed the Mountain Men, and you didn’t?”

A pair of soft hands tug at her elbow. She turns to find Clarke. “You’re drunk, Lilith. Let’s get you to bed before you say something you regret.” Clarke finally looks at Lexa, who’s busy staring at any part of Clarke other than her face. “Or something that’ll get you killed.”

\---

KNOCK! KNOCK ! KNOCK! Goes the door. Lilith longs to toss a knife at whoever’s creating the ghastly sound. But then the handle turns, and she slumps into the drool-stain she’d left on the couch.

The door swings open and a burly man barges through.

"Nyko!" Clarke says, with a real smile.

"Sky queen," he mutters, crossing his arms.

Clarke blinks fast and then recovers, like she’s surprised by the cold reception from the big man. "This is Lilith. I mean Nia."

If possible, Nyko's face falls even further. "I know who she is."

"It's alright, Clarke. I've done nothing to deserve a warm welcome. The opposite, truthfully." And not just last night.

“Heda has a message,” Nyko continues. His face is still colored by darkness. “Tonight’s the night of the summer fete. All of Polis will be in attendance. As will the both of you."

Lilith groans. “Not another social event. My head’s still pounding from yesterday.”

“Last night was more like an anti-social event,” Clarke deadpans.

“Ugh,” Lilith says, reeling. “I can’t imagine why Lexa would want to see me ever again.“

“Me neither,” Clarke says. That biting honesty, again. Lilith’s not used to hearing this nastiness from her. “Though she doesn’t seem thrilled to see me either.”

“Should she, Cluno?”

“Don’t call me that.”

“That’s not an answer.” Lilith stretches her legs across the small table in the center of the room. “Still mad at me for stating the obvious?”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. And don’t call me that.”

“Humbug,” Lilith says. Turning to Nyko, “I don't suppose this shindig is optional?"

"Naturally, death would be the only excuse."

"Oh, naturally,” Clarke says, gracing him with a sarcastic curl at the corner of her mouth. "What are we supposed to wear?"

"The Commander has asked a tailor to visit you when you are rested."

"And what if we won't be rested until tomorrow?"

“The tailor will arrive in two hours. Welcome to Polis." He walks out.

“Goodbye, freedom,” Lilith mutters into the fabric of the sofa.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time on AO3: Clarke takes over, masquerade balls and so much eyefucking. SO MUCH PINING.


	9. Harvest Festival - Day One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So much pining that I should have titled this chapter "Self-indulgent pinery". We get into Clarke's perspective, and needless to say, she sees the world a little differently from Lilith.

Clarke picks at a loose thread snaking out from the hand-sewn hem on her evening gown. She worries, as she had worried so often over the previous days, about what might happen when she next meets Lexa. She’s haunted by Lexa’s face when they met her at dinner the previous evening - how, in a matter of seconds, it transformed from glowy anticipation into burning anger and then, worst of all, indifference. 

“Come on Cluno. You’re less chatty than Lexa’s generals.” 

“I don’t have much to talk about,” she says. “And don’t call me that.”

“You’d better get your mask on.”

“I don’t understand why we have to wear them. It’s an open invitation for assassins.”

“Polis is a safe haven. Last time there was an attack within the city, Lexa burned 12 towns to the ground - one village per Clan. No one would be stupid enough to try anything.”

“As usual, restraint is strong with that one,” Clarke says. She runs her fingers over the embossed silverwork on her terracotta mask and remembers the chintzy plastic masks they had on the Ark, a masquerade party on another world, literally. “These masks are beautiful, but it's silly to turn friends into strangers.”

“You wanna know what's silly? These stupid gowns. Can you imagine if there actually was an attack? They wouldn’t even have to knock us down, we’d be so busy tripping on yards of fabric. At least the masks serve a purpose. For one night a year, we get to forget our responsibilities and become something other than ourselves.”

“That seems to be a real thing with you, huh,” Clarke says with false brightness, hoping it comes off as a joke. If Lilith’s is a coward, then what does that make her? Clarke is stilled by the idea that she and Lilith sought to escape their respective horrors, but Lexa, stubborn Lexa, remained in the center of hers, choosing to face them instead of wilting to a quiet corner of the Earth. 

“So you are still mad at me.”

“Of course not.” Clarke marvels at her ability to spill out angry things at Lilith, hurtful things, as though Lilith is the enemy here, as though she’s the one who betrayed her in her most desperate moment, not the one who protected her without expecting anything in return.

“LIlith,” Clarke says, hesitating. “Nia.”

“It’s fine, Clarke.” Lilith shakes her head. “As they say, a rose by any other name is still a rose.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“They didn’t teach you anything useful up on the Ark, eh?” Lilith stops and puts a hand out. “Hold the fort. The Commander approaches. Try not to cream your pants.”

Clarke feels her cheeks getting hot and ties her mask on. “There won’t be any...of that,” she mumbles. But just ahead of her, a few feet away, she sees a turquoise dress shimmer in the twilight sun; it’s Lexa, laughing at something someone else said. Her whole manner as the Commander of the Twelve Clans had disappeared, giving way to an ease that borders on the carefree. Clarke is mystified by this new side of her; before Polis, it was obscured with either an over-eagerness to engage Clarke in conversation or frustration that Clarke wasn’t automatically on the same page of their murderous novel.

But now, amongst the civilians of Polis, Lexa shows up as nothing more than herself, and that’s enough to delight the men and women of the town. They look to her as they might look at a goddess, eager to bask in her power and pay fealty to her. Clarke can’t hear what Lexa is saying at the moment, but she recognizes a quietness in her voice and her body language, a quietness borne of authority and calm.

“Clarke,” she hears from a million miles away. Then she realizes Lexa is speaking to her.

“The tailor did remarkably quick work with that dress,” she says with a smile. For a second, Clarke sees a bright spark in Lexa’s emerald eyes, but then it disappears, and Clarke’s left wondering if she imagined the whole thing. 

“Yeah,” Clarke says, trying not to think about the many pins the tailor jabbed into her, some of them piercing through the cloth and into her skin. “How come you’re not wearing a mask?”

“The city needs to see me first. To know that I’m here,” Lexa says, waving at her bodyguards. An attendant steps forward to hand her a porcelain half-mask covered in elaborate gold designs. “Will you help me tie it?”

Lexa turns around, and Clarke tries as hard as she can to concentrate on the task and not stare at the inky-blue rivers etched into Lexa’s back, just visible through the sheer folds of her turquoise dress.

“Careful Clarke, that’s too tight,” Lexa says, and Clarke nearly drops the mask. She ties a sloppy knot and snaps back, away from treacherous skin. “We should join the party.”

And so Clarke follows Lexa, saying no more words than required, barely looking upon each individual introduced by Lexa. She idly wonders whether Lilith is nearby, then she forgets to look.

Lexa, on the other hand, is positively chatty, garrulous even, flitting from person to person like an elegant butterfly. There’s more than one moment, too delicious, when Lexa leans in close to whisper a name into her ear, or a subtle hint at who Clarke should be talking to next, then pulls back, leaving Clarke slightly faint. 

Eventually, they’re separated. Clarke spends the rest of the party on the edge of her toes, peeking out over the sea of masks, searching for glowing green eyes. Everytime she thinks she’s found her, she finds some error in the dress or the hair or the voice.

At last, when the party begins to thin out, she sees her, Lexa, standing to the side of the hall, mask off, smiling softly in the hazy glow of the twilight. But this vision can’t be Lexa, not the Lexa who betrayed her without so much as a blink. No way, not this vessel of charm and social grace. 

Clarke attempts to move toward her to speak with her, but everytime she gets close she gets pulled into something else: a conversation, a drinking game, a bawdy joke, a sloppy seduction, a petty argument. She can’t begrudge the citizens of Polis their rebellion against the terror of their daily lives, but she wishes she could find a way through.

Finally, she’s able to move close. The last wakeful citizens gather around Lexa, soaking up her stories, telling her bits of their's. 

A young man prattles on about how his wife will barely look at him anymore when he comes home. As his passion increases, his cheeks puff out and turn color, brightening and brightening until Lexa’s barely-contained laughter comes tumbling out, peals of mirth that ring through the hallway. At his unhappy look, she hits him affectionately in the shoulder, and he sighs at his own folly. He picks up a small child sitting half-asleep in Lexa’s lap and carries her over his shoulder, turning to wish the Commander a good night. 

Watching the domestic scene in front of her, Clarke wonders if she knows Lexa at all, and she realizes that, in spite of everything, she’d really like to.

Now, with no one left between them, Lexa tips her head at Clarke, encouraging her to approach. Her lips turn up in a barely noticeable smile as Clarke steps ins. 

Then, out from nowhere, Lilith stumbles into the lamplight. Her eyes are blank as she looks from Clarke to Lexa. “I don’t think I'm needed here,” she says to Clarke, the pain in her voice all too apparent.

Lexa’s face hardens, almost in an instant, and all trace of lightness is swallowed up. “Until tomorrow,” she says to Clarke, walking off without even looking at her. 

“Goodnight,” Clarke replies, sucking in her breath. Clarke senses something else sitting behind Lexa’s casual sign-off. She senses them in Lexa’s slow halting walk, like she’s going to turn back at any moment and say something that could break Clarke into a thousand pieces. 

But then she just walks on, leaving Clarke to slowly return to her little cottage.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time on AO3: More drama, lots of talking, lots of snarking. 
> 
> I may have gotten carried away with this chapter, which is basically the epic fandom smash of two of my great loves: F. Scott Fitzgerald style writing and Clexa. Join me in the pinery.


	10. Polis: The Musical

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Clarke learns that Nia knows her a little too well, and The Ice Queen comes up with the title of the first song for her new musical.

Clarke doesn’t sleep that night. As soon as the sun comes up, she goes to their sitting room, only to find Lilith already there, slumped against the wall, her hair uncombed and her face a mess of dripping mascara and mud. Clarke recalls Lexa’s darkness at the sight of her friend, and struggles to reconcile the motherly figure that looked after her for so long with Queen Nia, the woman who killed Lexa’s lover in cold blood, breaking her forever. Nia doesn’t acknowledge her.

“You know, last night was surprisingly non-terrible." Clarke downs a glass of water, hoping to dispel her low-level headache. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

Nia purses her lips tight like she’s about to start breathing fire.

"Clarke of the Sky People is a very different person than Juno, the delicate girl."

“You thought I was delicate?” Clarke laughs a bitter laugh. “Delicate people could never do what I’ve done.”

“So it was all just an act, then.”

“Yes.” Clarke slowly refills her water glass. “It was.”

“Then I’m glad I wasted so much time on you.”

“Why did you?” Off Lilith’s silence, Clarke continues. "You were pretty damned clueless. I’d expect better from someone with your reputation."

"You're sounding an awful lot like Lexa."

"Well maybe that's a good thing. At least I'm trying to figure out what to do next. But you...you're just giving up."

"That was my intention, Clarke." Again, she pronounces 'Clarke' as though the name’s a dirty word. "To give it up. To find peace. I'm not so keen to return to my well-worn saddle."

"And you think I am?"

"I think that’s pretty obvious.”

Clarke recoils as though Lilith had slapped her. She blinks back tears. "What else can I do? I’ve just got to get through this, and then..."

"And then what? The holiday's over, Clarke. Juno's dead. And so's Lilith."

Clarke slumps down on the sofa. “Why did you kill Costia?”

“Who’s that?”

“You don’t know? Really?” After a minute with no response, Clarke says, “Lexa’s lady-love. The one whose head you chopped off.”

“I didn’t know that was her name.” Nia’s eyes waver and she picks at her fingernails. “You’re judging me, Clarke.”

“You made Lexa this way.”

“And what way is that?”

“Hard. Unfeeling.”

Nia laughs at this, a harsh laugh that echoes into Clarke’s ears like gunshots. “You murdered hundreds of innocents in cold blood, Clarke. Hundreds of our people. Hundreds of mountain people. Do you know all of _their_ names? Did you consider the feelings of everyone _they_ left behind?”

“I’m going to my room,” Clarke says, tossing aside a bracelet she’d borrowed for the previous day’s dinner. “They’ll come for us in an hour.”

“Now who’s running away?” Clarke doesn’t respond, so Lilith continues. “You accused me of being clueless earlier, but I got one thing dead right about you.”

Suddenly wary, Clarke lays a hand on the doorframe. She doesn’t turn around. “And that is?”

“The groupie thing. But I didn’t realize you were the head of the fan club.”

\---

As she follows a guard to the center of town, Clarke tries (and fails) to get Lilith’s words out from her mind. She’d thought she’d put her actions to bed over the long months in their little house at the end of the road, but her wounds bleed anew, rising through her throat, poisoning each breath. She thinks of the relish Lexa took in ruining their quiet, clandestine existence. But mostly, she thinks of how Lilith, despite no longer being Lilith, can see right through her.

“Why’d you leave without me, sky queen?”

Clarke looks at Lilith, who’s pulling herself up the mountain like a one-legged rabbit. Clarke crinkles her nose as she gets a whiff of pure ethanol. “Where’d you get that?”

“Get what?” Lilith slurs.

“It’s only noon and you’re already drunk.”

“Yup. Your point?”

Lexa walks up at that moment, and Clarke rolls her head back in annoyance. “I cannot catch a break,” she mumbles.

“Trouble in paradise?” Lexa taunts, giving both of them the once-over, then landing on Clarke. “I don’t know how you could stand her company as long as you did.”

“She hasn’t stabbed me in the back yet. Which puts her above 99% of the people of the people standing near me right now.”

“Don’t mind her, Lexi-lex. She can’t afford anything more luxurious than cheap shots.”

"You're drunk."

"I didn't know it was state-the-obvious day."

"And I didn’t know I could possibly think less of you."

“Ouch,” Nia says, pretending to stab herself in the heart. “Woe is me. Who’ll autograph my halberd now?”

“I’m gonna kill you if you keep this up.” Clarke shuffles away from her.

“No,” Lexa says. “That would break the alliance.”

“Suddenly you care about that, huh? Besides, I was kidding.” Clarke tries not to miss the debonair commander from the previous day. It’s better this way - less danger of being lulled into a false sense of security.

Lexa stops and clenches her fists. “Murder’s no joke, Clarke.”

“I hadn’t noticed.” Clarke spins around Lexa like a tetherball, practically spitting out her words. "You should have seen me after I killed the mountain men, just laughing and laughing through the nausea and the nightmares and the flashbacks. Think of all the fun you missed out on."

Lexa’s eyes dart all around her, as if she’s searching for a quick exit. “We’re almost at the plaza.”

An uncomfortable silence threatens to take over, interrupted only by Nia humming a tune. "Maybe we should sing a song to bring us together,” she says when she realizes the others are watching her. “The three merry murderesses of the post-apocalypse."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time on AO3: We return to the pinery, wherein Clarke and Lexa finally speak to each other and Clarke learns a bit about what the Grounders do for mass entertainment.


	11. The Best of Times, the Worst of Times

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Back into the pinery. Lexa and Clarke finally sit down and talk, and then Clarke learns what happens when the Grounders put on a show.
> 
> This was both my favorite and most frustrating chapter to write, so let me know what you think! I couldn't get this chapter right until my playlist kicked up "Transatlanticism" by Deathcab for Cutie, so I guess you could read this while listening to that song?

A group of warriors circle Nia, laughing as she attempts an arrhythmic dance. 

Clarke huffs in exasperation. “She wasn’t like this, you know. Not until you ripped us away.”

“She wasn’t like this before, either.”

“Is that why she’s still alive? I’ve been trying to figure out how you can look at her without sticking a knife in her throat.”

“The same way you can look at me, Clarke. Besides - weren't you the one who told me I couldn't go around killing people just because I feel like it?”

“So you didn’t ignore everything I said.”

“I didn’t ignore anything you said.” She blushes, and before Clarke can respond, she changes the subject. “How did you end up with her?”

“I...I don’t remember how I got there. I left Camp Jaha, and I was doing ok on my own. Foraging for myself, steering clear of just about anyone. Trying to heal.” Clarke notices Lexa look her in the eyes for the first time since she’d arrived in Polis. “A snowstorm landed, and I found the abandoned zoo. You know the one.”

Lexa nods.

“Well, it turns out it wasn’t so abandoned. There was this...giant bear….I killed it, somehow, but it bit me. I saw the wound festering, and I started to run, and then I kept running. The next thing I remember, I was in Lilith’s house. She took care of me for weeks; I was sick as a dog. Barely knew where I was. Then I woke up. And she still took care of me.”

Lexa nods, urging Clarke to continue.

“It wasn’t always happy; we fought like...the way I used to fight with my mom.” Clarke laughs at a memory, then lowers her voice. “But she kept me safe.”

A bright cackle interrupts their conversation. Nia is thrusting a bottle of liquor in the face of one of Lexa’s warriors. “Come on now! Another drink will help raise your spirit, and hopefully your skirt too.”

Lexa glares at Nia but refrains from comment. She grits her teeth in torment. “I’m glad ---”

Clarke softens. “Glad about…?”

“I’m glad she kept you safe.” Lexa fixes her eyes at a tiny beetle crawling on the ground. “I’m glad you’re alive.”

“You are?” Clarke smiles like the wind had just blown a warm breath through her arteries. Then her smile drops. “You left me --- you left my people to die.” 

“I know,” Lexa says. “And I can’t change that.”

“Would you though?” Clarke picks at a blade of grass, gently tearing it into two. “If you could.”

“When you spend too much time in the past, you lose yourself, Clarke. It can swallow you up like a black hole.”

Clarke’s flicks away the shredded grass. “So you haven’t even thought about it.”

Lexa sighs. “That’s not what I said.”

“But you won’t answer my question.” Clarke shifts her eyes back to Lilith, who’s licking at an empty flask, probably trying to protect herself from the black hole of her own past. “And so we’re stuck.” 

“You’re not a prisoner, Clarke. You can leave whenever you want.” Lexa speaks calmly, though her eyes cloud over like she knows that being ‘stuck’ has nothing to do with geography. “But you should give ‘here’ a chance.”

“Why?” Clarke shivers at the intensity of Lexa’s stare.

“One man in his time plays many parts.” Lexa springs to her feet and pulls Clarke up. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Lexa turns around and dazzles Clarke with a smile so bright that she almost forgets the frustrating conversation they'd just had. “You’ll see.”

\---  
EVENING

Clarke feels lighter than she has for days; part of it is the glass of mead by her side, steadily refilled by one of Lexa’s inner circle, but part of it must be the air itself, the sweet summer air spreading from her lungs to the rest of her body. A parade of lights stretch from their table all the way to the abandoned skyscrapers at the far end of the city. 

“It’s the last day of spring,” Lexa says. “When the city sparks back to life.”

“I can’t imagine it ever slowing down. It’s beautiful.”

Lexa turns away, but not before Clarke sees a gentle pink flush on her face.

“I told you that Polis was special.”

“You told me lots of things, Lexa. Forgive me for believing approximately none of them anymore.” But she says it without malice. For the first time on the ground, Clarke sees a different way of life, different even from the gentle peace she found with Lilith. With Nia.

All of a sudden, a deep bass drum booms throughout the town square. A clownish man with uneven braids kneels beside Lexa and whispers something in Trigedasleng. She nods in response, and rises up. “You must excuse me,” she says to Clarke. “The show’s about to begin.”

 _What show?_ The lights begin to flash, and the whole audience gets up and clanks their plates in time to the bass drum. A flock of birds dash over the city, probably scared by the avalanche of noise. Then, as suddenly as the flashing started, darkness overtakes the town. Light returns, but only to a raised platform at the end of the square.

The clownish man stands to the side of the platform, carefully directing his cast of characters into their places, then standing back. The cast freezes in place for a few minutes before he steps in and rearranges them into a new configuration.

In the middle of the third setup, Clarke realizes that each scene is taken from old paintings. She barely has time to process the sights in front of her, like Indra posing as Napoleon, face still taut like she’s at a funeral, before the lights shift, moving the scene from European expressionism into Mughal eroticism. In each scene, the actors barely change their costumes. Well, she calls them actors, but they’re just the people of the city, some of whom she’d seen before.

The lights change again, and out walks Lexa, her hair lifted above her in a complicated bird’s nest, her body enclosed in rich brocade and fine embroidery. Lexa stands in front of the tableau and begins to speak, but Clarke can’t pay attention to a word she says. She looks to the frozen bodies behind Lexa, at muscles glistening with the effort of holding so completely still. She remembers the first time she saw the scene they’re recreating; her father, casually flipping through her history and humanities textbook, lighting up on one particular page. 

He told her about the myth of Marianne, of how she carried the flag of liberty and justice through a vicious battleground, how her robes remained stark white despite the blood and guts spilling all over the field. How, long after she died, she remained a symbol of hope and goodness despite the many atrocities committed in her name.

As Lexa raises her hand, white flag and all, sparking thousands of cheers throughout the city, Clarke wonders how history will view Lexa. More than that, she wonders how history will see her.

\---

“Cluno! There you are!” Nia swings into view, her arms moving at a velocity not quite matched by her legs.

Clarke swears softly, wondering how she spent so many months with Lilith without picking up on her incomparable talent for bad timing. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees two of Lexa’s crew reach for their daggers.

“Please, Clarke. Don’t give up on me. You saw that I could be more than this. That I could be smart, and peaceful, and...kind."

Clarke takes a long sip of the mead by her side. She wants to tell Lilith that she won’t give up. She wants to tell her that she knows there’s more to her than what this world has made her into, that she can look at Nia and still find Lilith, but the words just don’t come out.

Lilith falls to her knees and the guards pull her up and out of the city square, yelling threat-like promises to Clarke that they’ll get her home safely and make sure she stays there.

Clarke turns away. There, at the bottom of the hill, is Lexa, gliding past the streetlights in robes so white they’re almost blinding. Here comes her Marianne, floating above the wreckage of the recent past, still finding a way to be graceful in the best of times and the worst of times.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The final painting in the Tableux Vivante scene is a non-naked representation of Delacroix's "Liberty Leading the People":  
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_Leading_the_People#/media/File:Eug%C3%A8ne_Delacroix_-_La_libert%C3%A9_guidant_le_peuple.jpg
> 
> Next time on AO3: Clarke decides to act based on her heart rather than her head.


	12. Truth and Firelight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke decides to let her body do the talking. Turns out the body isn't a great conversationalist, especially once Anya comes up. DRAAAAAMA.

“Did you enjoy yourself?” Lexa doesn’t look at Clarke. As they walk, hands almost touching, Clarke memorizes every crack in the path that leads them back to the palace.

“Surprisingly…. I did.” Clarke tilts her chin towards Lexa, smiling in a sideways glance, but Lexa stares straight ahead. A rush of color blooms through Lexa’s face, up from her neck, but still she doesn’t look. “Where are we going?”

“The show’s over. There’s no reason for me to stay in this ridiculous dress.” She holds out a hand to the guard in front of the largest building in the city, a gleaming white mansion with 20-foot tall columns and elaborate iron doors. “This is where I live.”

“Tiny place you got there,” Clarke says, hoping that a quick joke will distract Lexa from her increasing nerves. Why is she following Lexa? And into her _room_? Clarke shakes her head and moves forward.

“It’s not just a home.” Lexa walks swiftly through the hallway. On either side, Clarke sees elaborately decorated ballrooms set up with enormous round tables. “It’s where business gets done. Come, my quarters are this way.”

Clarke follows Lexa up a giant marble staircase, taking care not to trip on the giant animal skins carpeting each step. Eventually, they stop, in front of a large iron door held fast with multiple locks. Lexa carefully unlocks each one, taking her own time, moving to her own deliberate rhythm.

“That’s some kind of security. I thought Polis was a safe haven?”

“It is,” Lexa says, waving her in. “For now.”

As they walk in, Clarke is nearly speared by the antlers of an elk head. Lexa quickly grabs her elbow and steers her to a sofa. “Wait there.”

“Does the possibility of accidental impalement help you sleep at night?”

“As a matter of fact, yes. Only an idiot would dare disturb me in the dark.”

“I would not want to walk in here drunk.”

“Then we won’t be inviting Nia, will we.”

“Commander Lexa of the Alliance of the 12 clans.” Clarke laughs, incredulous. “Was that a joke?”

“Maybe,” Lexa mumbles, kneeling by the mantlepiece. As she works, Clarke watches her hands, hard and leathery like old jackets, as they caress a flint, coaxing the fire to life. In a few seconds, the room is covered with a soft yellow glow. Clarke notices a handful of books by the bed, some she’s heard of, some she hasn’t.

“Shouldn’t these be in the library?”

“They will be, when I can bear to part with them.” Lexa grabs a clean set of clothes from her closet. “I’ll just go change.”

Clarke lingers in Lexa’s bedroom, watching the fire diminish into blue coal, casting shadows over the walls. An elaborate set of mirrors is projecting the remaining light to all corners of the room.

On the mantle across from the bed, there’s a photograph of a much younger Lexa grinning next to another girl, a girl with raven hair and blue eyes wide as dinner plates. _That must be Costia._ Their fingers lie tangled over a jade green necklace sitting flush against Costia’s clavicle. Clarke takes a deep breath and looks away. She idly wonders how, with so much destroyed, photography survives.

When she thinks about everything that disappeared after the nuclear incident, things of beauty and things of horror, she feels her heartbeat slow. The insignificance of her own self, of her own actions, hits her like a slap. She’d saved her people, but what did that matter? Others will come and wipe away the memory of everything that happened; everything she did, everything she sacrificed, would be lost to the history books, if even that. Why would the deaths of her father or her friends even matter when so many others have already been forgotten?

She looks back at the photograph of Lexa and realizes something she can barely articulate even to herself. Then she calls for Lexa to return.

\---

“Missed me already?” Lexa’s face glows against the dying firelight. “Clarke, are you ok?”

“I will be,” Clarke says. In one swift motion, she walks up to Lexa, places a hand on her face, and kisses her deeply.

For a moment, for one perfect moment, they stand suspended in the hallway, drinking in each other’s courage. But then, just as suddenly, Lexa pulls away. “No,” she says, breathless. “We need to talk.”

“Maybe we should play to our strengths,” Clarke says, pushing Lexa against the wall, pressing her lips against Lexa’s neck.

Letting out a deep breath, Lexa slithers out. “Stop it.”

Clarke’s face hardens. “Don’t tell me you don’t want this.”

 

“What happened to Anya, Clarke?”

“Huh?”

“How. Did Anya. Die.”

\---

Clarke’s left hand, still holding a strand of Lexa’s hair, freezes in the air. “She died. Just like I said.” She ghosts a silhouette over Lexa’s shoulder, pulling her hand back the moment there’s no risk of touching her.

“Actually, you didn’t say.” Lexa straightens her dress, brushing out the creases from their brief huddle.

“Do you really want to talk about this now? In the middle of the festival?”

“Then when, Clarke? Would you rather have this conversation in front of my generals?”

Clarke becomes aware of a sudden stiffness in her limbs. She watches Lexa, whose bottom lip curls in slight disdain, whose hand moves, almost imperceptibly, to where her sword should be.

“Does it matter now?” Clarke reaches in her mind for a better response, a deep verbal cut that could simultaneously put her in control and dismiss the entire line of questioning, but she comes up empty. “I didn’t kill her, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

The fire continues to burn down, and though its glow had only recently made Lexa more radiant, it now casts a deathly pall over her face. She looks almost as anxious to end the conversation as Clarke, but after a few heavy, silent seconds, she stands up straight and draws her elbows in.

“What happened, then? Nyko found her body just outside the Camp Jaha perimeter, riddled with the marks of your terrible weapons.”

That explains Nyko’s hostility. Clarke feels her heart beating incoherently, and resigns herself to the weakest option: the truth.

“We escaped the mountain together. We weren’t friends, not exactly, but I convinced her to let me talk to you. I convinced her we needed an alliance.” Clarke waits for Lexa to interrupt, but nothing comes. “She gave me the braid to show to you. It wasn’t easy to get her to trust me, but she did. And then….” Clarke pauses.

“Don’t you dare stop now,” Lexa says, practically hissing.

“When we got close to camp, they shot at both of us. I got out with a bullet scrape. Anya didn’t get out at all. I didn’t know the rest of the Ark had come down. And they didn’t know about the Grounders. About what we’d been through.” Clarke pauses. “They let fear guide their decisions. Like always.”

"You expect me to believe that?"

"No," Clarke says, defeated. "But it's what happened."

More than a few moments pass in silence, until Lexa gulps down a burst of emotion.

"We spend so much time thinking of the good of the many, Clarke. But we can never have justice for the ones we love." Lexa shrinks into herself and shuffles toward her bedroom. “You can find your way back to your cottage, I hope.”

Clarke turns to leave, then she stops and sets her jaw firmly. “No.”

“Excuse me?”

“You don’t get to hate me for this, Lexa. Not after what you did.”

“And what did I do, Clarke?”

“You betrayed me. You betrayed us. Everything we could have been, you were the one who shot it in the ass.” Clarke moves toward Lexa, backing her into a corner. “I’ve done things, Lexa. Terrible things. And I was willing to look past what you did because I’ve done worse.”

“Back away from me Clarke.” Lexa speaks softly, like she’s pulling her strength inwards.

But Clarke merely shakes her head, a mad glint in her eye. “I’m broken, Lexa. And I think you know that, because you’re broken too. And no matter how fractured we are, we’ll go on breaking into smaller and smaller pieces until we disappear. This is our fate on this Earth.”

Lexa’s eyes soften. “It doesn’t have to be that way.”

“Then what will it be?” Clarke feels her heart race, but she doesn’t stop. “I don’t want anything anymore. I don’t want to be the Sky Queen, or whatever your people are calling me. I don’t want to be responsible for my people, I don’t want to lead on this Earth. I don’t want to hurt anyone ever again.”

Clarke clutches the back of her neck and steps heavily back.

"There's only two things I want, and one of them's impossible now." Clarke can't bring herself to say it out loud, her desperate yearning to rewind time and return to her place of peace, to her little house at the end of the road. She can’t say how she lies awake every night obsessing over all the ways that she and Lilith had grown careless over the many months they’d spent in their humble home. But to say it out loud would be to acknowledge, once and for all, that it's over.

"And the other," Lexa asks, almost whispering.

"I hate myself for wanting it." Clarke's eyes begin to water. "It's you, Lexa. After everything you did, I still want you. What does that say about me?"

Lexa lifts her hand, but Clarke immediately recoils.

“Touch me now and I might actually break,” Clarke says. She wipes her face and runs out of the palace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So there we are. Clarke's been walking in a fog since they were captured and taken to Polis, but suddenly the fog clears and there's nothing left but angst.
> 
> Can our lovely ladies find a way to make it work once their cards are on the table?
> 
> Next time on AO3: Clarke realizes how much she needs her friend, then gets a surprise visitor. Things escalate.


	13. A Friendship Rekindled

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke turns to the one person as disturbed by their current situation as she is, and is surprised to find that they've somehow reversed roles. The business of Polis doesn't stop, however, and Clarke receives a surprise she isn't ready for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys looove Nia, it seems (that was intentional). And dislike Lexa, eh? (that was not intentional). At any rate, we'll be seeing tons of both of them, and Clarke's not going to make any more rash decisions.

As soon as she wakes up, Clarke turns and curls up into a ball. When she thinks of the previous evening, she feels a slight self-contempt for acting so thoughtlessly, for losing herself in a moment when there was no moment to be lost in.

But then she remembers Lexa’s face when they parted, and feels nothing but pain. She has a desperate urge to fix things, even though she knows this thing might be too broken to fix.

When she gets to the palace, she begs and begs for an audience. She gets as far as the throne room before Indra puts a gentle hand on her shoulder and shakes her head.

Clarke finds her way back to her cottage, surprised to see Nia standing tall in the living room, fully dressed and completely sober, clutching a pair of white leather gloves.

“So only one of can hold our shit together in any given moment, huh?” Clarke spits the words out, and before she even finishes her sentence, furious tears start spilling from her eyes.

Nia moves in close. “What happened, Clarke? Did she do this to you?”

Clarke shakes her head, unable to stop the tears from flowing. “We did this to each other.”

“Do you love her?” Nia doesn’t beat around the bush.

 _Would you cut my head off if I did?_ “I hardly know her.”

“Since when does that matter?”

“Please, stop asking me questions” Clarke says, eyes moving side to side in search of something, anything to focus on. “Can you just be Lilith for a minute?”

Nia pulls Clarke in without even hesitating. “I never stopped being her, Clarke.”

She strokes Clarke’s hair and Clarke feels her heart breaking all over again. Nia continues to hold her until her breathing steadies. After a minute, Clarke pulls away and wipes her face.

“I know,” Clarke says. “I’m sorry I’ve been ignoring you. I shouldn’t have. I just...I couldn’t connect the woman I considered my friend with--”

“The murdering vixen of legend?” Nia’s mouth turns up, ever so slightly. “The enemy of the alliance, the mistress of darkness, the…”

“--I was gonna go with the wicked witch of the North,” Clarke says, sputtering a laugh through her slowing tears. “But I’m glad you’ve kept your flair for the dramatic.”

“Turns out that drowning yourself in bad trysts and worse drink is a surefire way to fuel the creative mind.”

“I think something’s off with your cost-benefit analysis.”

Nia sets down her gloves and shuts the front door tight. She picks up a furry blanket and slouches back onto the couch, pulling Clarke in and wrapping the blanket around them both. Clarke looks out the window and sees a silent town, still but for the occasional roustabouts who are still lolling around in their dress clothes, picking up the empty bottles in the streets.

“I guess the party’s over,” Clarke says in a small voice. “And somehow, we survived.”

“And not a little worse for wear.”

“That’s what happens when you drink your own weight in ethanol,” Clarke says.

Nia laughs at this. “I like you, Clarke Griffin. From trainwreck to spitfire in 60 seconds.”

“I’d be happier somewhere in the middle.” She looks back at Nia, and notices again how she’s in full battle dress, shoulder braces and all. “What’s with the costume?”

“Circle jerk of pompous idiots.” At Clarke’s raised eyebrow, she sighs. “The clan chiefs are gathering for a congress of the Alliance.”

“But you didn’t want any part of that.”

“I know,” Lilith says with a soft smile. “But to win, sometimes you have to play your part.”

“Lexa said something similar to me.” Clarke scrunches her forehead, trying to remember. “Something about how one man, in his lifetime, plays many parts.”

Lilith breaks out laughing.

“What’s so funny?”

“After all these years, the girl’s still got the social skills of a drunken canary.” Lilith swallows another laugh and sobers herself. “That was her signature move when she was young, quoting Shakespeare and making oh-so-serious love eyes at the object of her interest. Not that it ever worked.”

Clarke blushes, knowing that look of Lexa’s all too well. “You knew her? When she was young?”

“A little. Before she was ripped away to become the Commander.” Lilith’s voice carries more than a hint of bitterness. “She was just another warrior in training, but serious beyond her years, even as a kid. But she had a big heart. I guess being Heda took care of that little weakness.”

Clarke turns to the window again. A hooded man walks past, followed by a group of soldiers in old overcoats and ten-gallon hats, clutching their lapels the way they would normally clutch their weapons. They walk with suspicious eyes, heads faced forward while their eyes scan from left to right.

“Sankru. They walk the desert like cowboys of old. They’re in the alliance insofar as it protects their independence.”

“That’s a contradiction in terms.”

“Most politics are just that.”

After the Sankru pass, another hooded man walks by. Clarke smiles at the way that golden tufts of hair peek out from beneath his hood, giving him the air of a wet porcupine. Then, she can’t restrain herself from swearing aloud when she sees who follows.

“What is it?”

Clarke moves to the window to get a better view of the unfolding scene. The group comes to a sudden standstill, pausing in fear as one woman emerges. The woman in question holds her head high and berates the soldiers, grinding her teeth as she spits out her orders. Her eyes are dark and her face is haggard, but she still wields her authority well. She moves to the front of the group and they set off with purpose.

Clarke gulps. “My mother.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time on AO3: The council meets, and Clarke womans up on behalf of Nia.
> 
> Thanks for all the comments and thoughts! As we speed to the end, it's helped me to craft the future of this story. I'm somewhat surprised which characters you guys have latched onto, but I guess it makes sense - this is a story of healing, not romance, and Clarke, Nia and Lexa all have their demons to conquer.


	14. Fixing Nia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nia's ready to take back the mantle of leadership, but it turns out it may not be hers to take. A bit of light-hearted comedy ensues, and Lexa and Nia finally find some common ground.

Silently they watch as more clans trudge by their window. They’re up to seven, by Clarke’s count. Every once in awhile, she hears Nia draw her breath like she’s about to say something, but then she breathes out again, preserving the silence. Clarke can imagine the questions running through her head, the main one being why Clarke didn’t run out to her mother immediately. Truthfully, she’s been asking herself the same thing. Some invisible force holds her back, a force that feels something like fear, but heavier.

After a few minutes, there’s a loud knock on the door and Clarke nearly jumps out of her skin. Nia opens the door, and a little ragamuffin, no older than ten, wordlessly shuffles in with trays of food. She drops them on the rickety dining table in the corner of the living room, and the clatter permanently dispels the silence.

“We’re not dining with everyone else?” The girl shakes her head, afraid to look Nia in the eye. “Why not?”

The girl’s trembling becomes more obvious, and Nia moves close, lifting her chin with a single finger. She towers over the diminutive child, casting a shadow over her face. “Do you know when the Clan meeting is?”

Still that same cowardly shake of the head. Foolish girl, not realizing what she surrenders with a simple gesture.

“Don’t you think you’d better find out?” Nia’s voice is soft but carries a threat. She bares her teeth and the little wretch scurries away.

“So, the wicked witch returns.” Clarke catches Nia’s eyes. Her pupils had grown wide and dark.

“I didn’t say anything untoward.”

“It’s not what you said.” Clarke had always assumed that Nia’s hostility to visitors stemmed from a need to stop people to look at her too closely. But now, thinking back on their meager existence at the edge of civilization, she wonders if Nia was always searching for tiny ways to exercise the power she once held. Whether she missed it on some level.

Once again, a loud knocking saves them from their heavy silence, but this time, it doesn’t come from the front door. Clarke and Nia freeze; after a minute, the knocking starts again. Nia runs to her bedroom. “It’s coming from here,” she says. They wait a minute, then the knocking starts again.

“Under the bed,” Clarke says. “Help me move it.”

They both push, but the bed barely moves.

“Maybe it’s stuck.” Clarke walks around it, looking for an obstruction. A small metal bar just sticks out from under the front bed leg. She pushes it, and the bed immediately turns over, tossing her against the wall. She squeals as she clambers out from under the displaced bedspread. “What the hell was that?” She yanks bedsheets from her face, then sighs at what she sees before her.

There’s Lexa, out from nowhere, looking away in a failed attempt to refrain from laughter.

Clarke attempts to hop up, but the tangled bedsheets interfere with her plans. And so she tumbles again into the nest of cotton and fur.

“I wish I could watch this on a loop,” Nia says with a snicker. She steps toward Clarke and kneels down. “I think it’s official, Clarke. You’ve fallen for Lexa.”

To Clarke’s disgust, even Lexa can’t help smiling at this. She continues to try to extricate herself, until Nia finally takes pity and offers her a hand up.

“I’m glad you two think this is funny. At least we’ve finally found you some common ground,” Clarke says, out of breath. She looks at the gaping hole in the middle of the room. A wooden staircase spirals down into darkness. Then, to Lexa, “Couldn’t you have used the front door?”

“That would not have been as amusing,” Lexa says with a smirk. “Besides, I have confidential business with Nia.”

Oh. “I’ll leave you guys to it then.” Clarke steps toward the door, but before she can get anywhere, Nia grips Clarke by the arm, so tight that her fingers begin to tingle.

“She stays,” Nia says to Lexa, who rolls her eyes then nods her acquiescence.

Lexa closes the bedroom door. “A terrified child came up to me and started going on about the monster in cottage 13.”

“Oh please. I didn’t say anything to scare her.”

“Just your general demeanor, then.”

Nia straightens up and draws her arms in. “Is this what you snuck in here to tell me? I mean, I’m not complaining about the Clarke Griffin comedy show, but it doesn’t seem like it’s worth all the cloak-and-dagger bullshit.”

“I disagree. But you’re right, that’s not why I’m here. It’s lucky for you I bumped into her before she told someone else that you were asking to attend the Clan meeting.”

“Why on Earth would that matter? I’m not evading my duties anymore.”

“Do you remember which day you left for your walkabout?”

“Of course I do. It was right…” Nia picks up one of the fallen pillows and brushes off the dirt. “It was right before the harvest festival.”

“Just over a year.”

“I forgot...I thought I had more time.”

“There’s a chance your people will defer.”

“Who’d they send?” Nia pulls the pillow tight, crushing it in her embrace.

“Uthbert the idiot.”

“That’s two things we’ve agreed upon in one day. Maybe we’re getting soft.” Nia gazes into the the gaping hole in the center of the room. “He hates me.”

“I’m glad you haven’t saved your loveable side for me.”

“Don’t mock me, Lexa. This is serious.”

“If you two are being civil, I’m guessing it’s serious.” Clarke pries the pillow from Nia’s hands and places it on the upturned bedframe. She reaches for Nia’s hand, but Nia just stares into the ground, blinking rapidly. “What’s going on,” she asks gently.

“I’ve been gone more than a year, Clarke. They can replace me.”

“Then let them. I thought that’s what you wanted.”

Nia draws a handkerchief from her pocket and wipes her hands. She attacks a spot between her thumb and forefinger, rubbing it and rubbing it until it turns red.

“If that happens, she can’t show her face again,” Lexa says. “They’ll kill her on sight.”

“But why? Won’t they be happy to have you back?”

“Don’t be naive. What idiot would dilute their power by keeping the old ruler around?” She walks off into the front room, taking a moment to stare outside before pulling the curtains close.

Clarke, chastened, doesn’t try to follow, though she’s surprised that Lexa doesn’t move either. She silently counts the seconds that pass without either of them making eye contact. She loses count more than once; in her desperation to avoid worrying about her friend, her mind leads her in strange directions. She longs to break the silence, but still she holds herself in, certain it’s Lexa’s turn to put herself on the line.

“I don’t want her to suffer, you know,” Lexa says at last.

“Congratulations on being a basic human.”

“I’m not looking for your approval.”

“That’s good, ‘cause you’re not getting it.”

Lexa moves in front of Clarke, so close that Clarke can smell the burnt edges of the ash smeared on Lexa’s face. So close that she can’t turn away, even if she tries.

“I’ll do whatever it takes to fix this.”

Clarke tries to look away, but everything in her line of sight is Lexa, unmistakably Lexa. From the warpaint to the ripped black tights, it’s her. She wants to claw her eyes out, but at the same time, she doesn’t want to look away.

“And what exactly do you mean by...this.”

Lexa’s eyes grow misty and she turns away. “Nia’s situation. Obviously.”

With a slow and tentative nod, Clarke suppresses an overwhelming urge to challenge Lexa, to goad her into admitting what she’s really here to fix. “Why are you helping her, Lexa? After what she did?”

“You know why. Please don’t make me say it.”

And she does know, all too well. This is the bargain they’ve struck in silence; Lexa helps Nia and maybe, just maybe, Clarke can look Lexa in the eye without hating herself. “You didn’t tell me my mother was coming here.”

“I didn’t know. Your people send someone different to every meeting. They lack leadership.” Lexa leaves the statement hanging in the air, but Clarke doesn’t reward her with a reaction. “Besides, you haven’t shown any interest in what they’re up to.”

“Well yes, but...”

Lexa looks at Clarke in amusement. “But what?”

Before they can discuss this latest development any further, Nia stomps back in. “I want to face the council.”

“That’s an incredibly stupid idea. If Uthbert gets what he wants, he’ll have you executed today. You need to hide.” Lexa points to the secret passage. “I didn’t come this way for fun.”

Nia scoffs. “Hide like a coward?”

“Let me fight this battle for you. I can win it.”

“Sorry Lexa, but I have no reason to trust that you'd actually fight for me. What's to stop you from giving me up at the first decent offer?”

Lexa huffs with impatience. “I wouldn't be here if that was my intent.”

“I still have my pride,” Nia replies, softly. “I can't just surrender my fate to someone who has every incentive to betray me.”

“You can’t go in there, Nia. I won’t let you.” Clarke balls her hands into fists, trying not to panic.

“Then what am I supposed to do, Clarke?”

“I’ll go. I’ll make sure Lexa sees this through.”

“You can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“You’ll be seen by everyone, Clarke! You’ll undermine your own people.”

“I have an idea.” Lexa taps her lips with a finger, processing. She turns to Clarke with a half-smile. “You’re not gonna like it.”

And that’s how Clarke ends up at the most important political gathering in her lifetime disguised as Lexa’s handmaiden.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time on AO3: The Clan meeting takes place, and as you'd imagine, nothing goes according to plan. Clarke and Abby reconnect under the worst circumstances possible, and Lexa and Nia have to pick up the pieces.
> 
> TWO CHAPTERS TO GO Y'ALL. ALL PLOTTED OUT AND IT SHOULD BE A WILD RIDE.


End file.
